Blogging and conferencing
Many thanks to Russ Bither-Terry from Rulablog, who invited me to come to the UNC-Duke Consortium Latin American Studies conference—yesterday’s sessions were at Duke. This is a great example of what blogging can do. I would never have known Russ otherwise, and would not have attended without him. Not only did I get to meet him in person, but also got to see some old friends as well (since I got my Ph.D. at
The day’s panels ended with Ariel Dorfman, who gave the keynote address. I had not met him before, but yesterday had the opportunity to chat with him a few times, and to tell him I use his play Death and the Maiden in my Latin American politics class. If you have not read the play, you should (you can also watch the movie with Sigourney Weaver et al, but I didn’t think much of it).
Dorfman’s talk really centered on the idea of telling the truth. At the end, he read the article (“Letter to an Unknown Dissident”) he published in February 2003, shortly before the Iraq invasion. Here is a copy I found online. I had not read it before, and it is really powerful. As he said in his talk, it has the potential to anger everyone. But it is the truth as he sees it, as someone who was hunted by a dictatorship and anguished about what to do.
4 comments:
Nice letter but this is the same dude who wrote the barf inducing paean in Time to the thug and coward Che Guevara. I can't take anything he says seriously, after read that.
I saw Death and the Maiden on Broadway with Glenn Close, Ricjard Dreyfuss and Gene Hackman. It was probably the most powerful thing I've seen there.
I also had the pleasure of meeting and having lunch with Russell Bither-Terry las summer, an all-around nice guy.
I saw it in a small theater in San Diego around 1993 or 1994, and it really stuck with me.
Aww. Randy is too kind. Group hug.
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